The Vietnamese military has been planning for a possible “war of aggression” by the US more than 50 years after the end of the Vietnam War, according to a report.
An internal military document prepared in 2024, released by the human rights group Project88 on Tuesday, showed that even as Hanoi publicly deepened ties with Washington, its defence establishment was planning for a potential US invasion and treating it as a “belligerent” power.
The document, titled “The 2nd US Invasion Plan”, was completed by Vietnam’s ministry of defence and compiled in August 2024. This was less than a year after the two countries elevated relations to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, the highest level it had ever been.
That upgrade, announced during President Biden’s visit to Hanoi in September 2023, capped nearly three decades of steadily improving relations since diplomatic ties were normalised in 1995.
President Biden raises a toast on his visit in 2023
EVAN VUCCI/AP
The military assessment leaked on Tuesday, however, suggested Vietnamese planners were deeply suspicious of US intentions and harboured fears that Washington could seek to undermine Communist rule, through support for a so-called “colour revolution” similar to uprisings seen in post-Soviet states in the early 2000s.
Project88 quotes the plan as stating: “While there is currently little risk of a war against Vietnam, due to the US’s belligerent nature, we need to be vigilant to prevent the US and its allies from ‘creating a pretext’ to launch a war of aggression against our country.
“The US and its allies could fully exploit the geographic and natural features of Vietnam’s vast seas and long coastlines, with the superior strength of its navy, to conduct military operations against our country.”
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Vietnam has one of the most powerful armed forces in the region
VINCENT THIAN/REUTERS
Project88 said it obtained the plan from a reliable source and that it had independently verified that the document existed.
“There’s a consensus here across the government and across different ministries,” Ben Swanton, co-director of Project88, said. “This isn’t just some kind of a fringe element or paranoid element within the party or within the government.”
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According to the document, Vietnamese analysts believed the US, in pursuit of strengthening deterrence against China, was willing to employ “unconventional forms of warfare and military intervention” and even “large-scale invasions” against states that “deviate from its orbit”.
US marines during the Tet Offensive in 1968. Vietnam fears further US aggression
ALAMY
“Hanoi sees Washington as an existential threat and has no intention of joining its anti-China alliance,” Swanton wrote. “In this respect the plan upends over a decade of US policy, which has sought to court Vietnam into such an alliance, while turning a blind eye to human rights abuses in service of this goal.”
Nguyen Khac Giang, from Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, said: “The military has never been too comfortable moving ahead with the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the United States.”
The assessment highlights tensions in Vietnam’s leadership, where the Communist Party’s conservative, military-aligned faction is focused on external threats to the regime.